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Selene wished that the hum of the plane was soothing.
Alas, it was not soothing at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite of soothing: it was oppressive, an incessant drone that crawled into her ears and nested there, amplifying every thought she'd been trying so, so hard to suppress for the past three hours.
Selene shifted in her seat, one leg tucked awkwardly under the other, one shoulder pressing against the cool, indifferent wall of the aircraft. She wasn't sure if it was the altitude or the company that was making her chest feel tight, but either way, she couldn't relax. Kahili was beside her, legs crossed and hands resting easily on the armrests as though she were lounging on a sunlit veranda back in Alola instead of being crammed into economy seating at thirty-thousand feet in the air. It wasn't that Selene disliked Kahili; she admired her, even. But the woman had a way about her—a natural gravity, even despite her serene nature—that made Selene believe herself to be a disheveled child playing dress-up in an oversized Champion's cape. And maybe she was...
She pulled her cap lower over her eyes as if doing so would help her disappear under its brim, though the gesture was mostly for herself; Kahili wasn't even looking at her. The Elite was presently engrossed in an in-flight magazine, flipping through its glossy pages with unhurried fingers. Meanwhile Selene's knee bounced involuntarily, and she caught herself glancing at Kahili out of the corner of her eye, wondering if she'd noticed. Of course she hadn't. Or, worse, maybe she had but was too polite to comment on it...?
Selene exhaled sharply through her nose and tried to focus on the window instead, staring out at the endless expanse of clouds that looked like they had been painted onto the sky. The view didn't help; it only reminded her how far from home she was—how far from Alola, with its warm sands and salt-laden breezes, its easy smiles and familiar faces. She missed it already, and they hadn't even landed in Sinnoh yet.
This wasn't what she'd signed up for. When she had battled her way into the history books as Alola's first Champion, she hadn't thought much about what came after. At the time, it had seemed like the pinnacle of everything she'd ever wanted: the thrill of the fight, the satisfaction of victory, the camaraderie of her Pokémon at her side. She'd imagined herself standing at the top of Mount Lanakila, her name immortalized in the League's records, and that had been enough. But the reality was messier. Champion wasn't just a title; it was a responsibility, and one she hadn't been prepared for. There were meetings and public appearances, interviews and endorsements, and now this: an international League summit in Sinnoh, where the world's most powerful Trainers would gather to discuss... what, exactly? Trade agreements? Cross-regional tournaments? She hadn't been paying attention when Professor Kukui tried to explain it to her; she'd merely feigned understanding of his words, nodded along to his quieter tone of voice, so at odds with the cheery disposition he presented everywhere else, but her mind had been elsewhere. She was good at pretending to listen. It wasn't the same as being good at diplomacy.
Talking to people wasn't the issue. Selene could talk—she could chatter, joke, banter with the best of them. It was something Kukui had always praised her for, back when he was still trying to shepherd her through the early days of her Island Challenge.
"You've got the people's touch, kid," he'd said, his grin as wide as Hau's on a typical day. And maybe she did. She liked people, and people liked her. It was easy to flash a smile, to laugh at the right moments, to make herself approachable. But there was a difference between being liked and being respected, and she wasn't sure she'd mastered the latter. Diplomacy wasn't about being liked—it was about navigating unspoken rules, about saying the right things in the right way to the right people. It was about power, and Selene had never cared much for power. She cared about her Pokémon, about her friends, about the rush of adrenaline when a battle was down to the wire. Politics bored her. And now she was flying halfway across the world to sit in a room full of people who probably spoke in politics the way she spoke in slang.
Kahili suddenly moved, folding the magazine closed with a flick, and Selene tensed instinctively. The Elite turned towards her, her expression serene.
"You've been quiet. Nervous?"
Selene forced a laugh, too sharp and too quick. "Nope. Just tired." She tugged at the brim of her cap again, unnecessarily; it was already as low as it could go, shading her face like a curtain she could duck behind.
Kahili raised an eyebrow—not in disbelief, exactly, but in that knowing, unruffled manner that Selene never had words for. It wasn't judgment, though; Kahili didn't judge. If anything, that made it worse. There was only patience in her gaze, an invitation for Selene to elaborate, to share whatever storm was brewing in her mind, and Selene hated it. She didn't want to be dissected like this, not by someone who always seemed so put together.
"I'm fine," Selene muttered, wincing at her clipped tone. "Just... long flight, you know?" She tried to smile, but it was as if she had forgotten the mechanics of sincerity. Kahili didn't press her—she never did—but the silence that followed was somehow worse. Selene found herself wishing Kahili would just go back to her magazine.
Instead, Kahili leaned back in her seat as she watched Selene from the corner of her eye. "You don't have to prove anything to me, you know," she said finally. "Not here. Not in Sinnoh. Not anywhere."
At these words, Selene turned her head sharply, her cap shifting askew, and for a moment she didn't know whether to feel angry or embarrassed or something in between. "I'm not trying to prove anything," she snapped before she could stop herself. The words came out defensive, brittle, and she immediately regretted them. Kahili didn't flinch, but Selene could see the faintest flicker of something in her eyes—disappointment, maybe, or pity, and both were unbearable.
"Okay," Kahili said simply, slowly turning her eyes towards the window. That was it. No lecture, no argument, no attempt to pry open whatever Selene was trying so desperately to keep shut. It should have been a relief, but it wasn't.
The truth was, Selene was nervous, but there was no way she'd admit that: not to Kahili, not to herself, not to anyone. She wasn't nervous about battling, because battling was easy; battling was straightforward, a conversation she knew how to have. It was everything else that tied her stomach in knots. It was the idea of walking into a room full of Champions, of League officials, of people who had been doing this for years and knew exactly how to play the game. What would they think of her? A kid from a backwater region with no Elite Four to her name until Kukui had cobbled one together on the fly, no established traditions beyond the Island Trials, no precedent for what a Champion was supposed to look like or act like. Would they see her as a peer? Or would they see her as a novelty, a curiosity, someone to be humored but not taken seriously?
She'd never been good at feeling out how people perceived her; she just talked and hoped for the best. Usually, it worked. But this wasn't like talking to Hau or Lillie or Kukui, or the locals who looked at her as merely another friendly face whenever she passed through town. This wasn't home. And the idea of trying to navigate this new world—this world of sharp suits and sharper smiles, of unspoken rules and invisible hierarchies—made her feel like she was walking into a battle with no type advantage and no strategy, just a handful of moves and a prayer.
Her fingers brushed against the Poké Balls at her belt, a reflexive motion she barely noticed anymore. At least they were a constant. Her team didn't care if she stumbled over her words, if she said the wrong thing at the wrong time, if she wasn't polished or poised or diplomatic. They didn't care if she was still figuring out what it meant to be a Champion. To them, she was just Selene—the girl who'd raised them, battled with them, believed in them even when the odds were stacked against them. To them, that was enough.
...But was that enough for the rest of the world?